Want To Become A Conference Speaker? Embrace Content And Invest In Your Brand

Guy Kawasaki, chairman and chief executive officer of Garage.com and co-founder of Alltop.com, left, listens as Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks basketball team, speaks during a panel discussion at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, U.S., on Saturday, March 8, 2014. The SXSW conferences and festivals converge original music, independent films, and emerging technologies while fostering creative and professional growth. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg; Mark Cuban; Guy Kawasaki

The year is nearing its end, and if I had to guess off the top of my head, I’d say I’ve been to more than 20 marketing conferences and events around the country as a keynote speaker or an attendee in 2016 alone. It’s a little exhausting traveling so often, but honestly, I love the opportunities I have to speak to audiences and connect with attendees and other speakers.

But the reason I speak to audiences isn’t because it brings me unparalleled joy (though I do enjoy it). Speaking at conferences brings real opportunity to my company: Conferences were Influence & Co.’s second-highest source of new clients in 2015, and they give me and my team the chance to strengthen relationships with partners and influencers face to face.

People ask me how they can establish themselves as conference speakers, and I have to be honest: It takes more than just throwing your name in the hat, being an OK storyteller, or cutting a big enough check to an organizer to get yourself onstage.

Use what you already have: content

Earning a speaking opportunity doesn’t just happen overnight; your audience won’t wake up one day and demand your presence onstage. It takes continuous investment in one of your most precious business assets: your brand and the content that surrounds it.

Think about the different factors that contribute to building your brand: your published thought leadership content; an active social presence; stamps of approval from industry influencers, publications, and other resources your audience trust; and, most importantly, your actual expertise in an area.

Content should be used for all the audiences your company wants to target: potential customers, internal employees, prospective partners, investors, and — you guessed it — conference organizers. Here’s why content works and how you can leverage it to become a speaker:

1. You can grow a following and build trust with an audience before you ever take the stage.

What’s a speaker without an audience? Building an audience and a following around your brand through content — before you hit the conference circuit — serves a couple of important purposes. First, it makes you more attractive to organizers; if you’ve already got an engaged following of your own, you are seen as more credible and have the potential to draw more engaged crowds.

Second, your content efforts are a hell of a lot easier to scale than your conference schedule. You can only be in so many places in a day, and you can only connect with audiences one crowd at a time. Content allows you to scale that engagement and keep growing your following, which means you don’t have to rely on an outside party (like a conference organizer) to connect you to an audience.

2. You can stay top of mind with influencers and organizers for future events.

I was a speaker at the BOLO Conference last year, and when one of the organizers introduced me, he said that my content kept me at the front of his mind all year. He went on to explain that it seemed like every few weeks, he saw content from me or from another influencer mentioning or sourcing my company’s content.

Because I consistently published and distributed content, I moved from his short-term memory to his long-term memory. Then, when it was time to select speakers for the event, I was already on his mental short list.

I should mention that pushing content online won’t magically land you an invite. You still have to promote and distribute your content to make sure it gets to the right people at the right time and brings opportunity to your company.

3. You can engage audiences before, during, and after a speaking event.

No conference organizer wants to work with a bunch of speakers who are only focused on day-of activities, and vice versa. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen organizers and speakers focus all of their energy on boosting registration or gathering content for the actual event, only to ghost when the conference is over.

It’s your job to keep your audience engaged, and that process doesn’t start or stop with the event dates. For example, start engaging audiences before the event through content that highlights influencers who will be there or teases what you might talk about. Then, use social media to follow and add to the conversations that are happening while you’re there.

When it’s all said and done, keep them engaged by sharing articles that include quotes from other speakers or offer relevant takeaways. Even better, enter them into a custom drip campaign if you can. Remember, the conference circuit is a tight-knit one, so you want to do all you can to build your brand as a solid speaker; aligning your online and offline marketing to connect with your audience will help.

Becoming a speaker at conferences in your industry can unlock a lot of opportunity for your brand, but getting your foot in the door takes work. A strong brand and engaging content make it a lot simpler.

John Hall is the CEO of Influence & Co., a company that specializes in expertise extraction and knowledge management that is used to fuel marketing efforts.